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President Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order revoking an Obama-era requirement to publicly report the number of U.S. drone strikes outside of war zones and the number of civilians killed by them.

A third patient is said to have been cured of HIV in an amazing medical breakthrough. The news comes on the heels of the revelation that the second person ever is HIV-free following a bone marrow transplant.

As TFTP reported last month, Houston-area prosecutors announced they will examine 1,400 cases which are linked to the cop who fabricated evidence to spark the raid on an innocent couple—in which they were murdered in their own home by police. Now, this week, nearly 1,000 more cases will be reviewed that are tied to another officer who was also relieved of duty, Houston police officer Steven Bryant.

Led by Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com has embarked on a new escalation of big tech fascism and tyranny by banning vaccine documentaries that question the official narrative of vaccine safety.As covered in my detailed video analysis of what’s next for Amazon, the tech giant will soon start remotely deleting vaccine Kindle books from Kindle devices, carrying out the Ministry of Truth agenda described in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Microplastic pollution spans the world, according to new studies showing contamination in the UK’s lake and rivers, in groundwater in the US and along the Yangtze river in China and the coast of Spain.

A Utah lawmaker set a goal to remove any incentive any Utah police officer could have to unnecessarily take money from someone.State law allows officers to seize property — even from people who are never charged, let alone convicted of a crime — under a process called civil asset forfeiture.

You think you’ve got rights? Think again.All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is in the Angolan capital of Luanda where, together with his counterpart Joao Lourenco, they will continue to restore relations that have previously been strained by anti-corruption issues.

The visit follows Angolan leader Joao Lourenco’s landmark November visit to Lisbon in which he sought to set aside tensions created by Portugal’s investigation of graft under his predecessor Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

“This state visit clearly marks a new chapter in the already strong relations between our two countries,” said Lourenco, who added both sides were working towards “developing exemplary relations”.

De Sousa said there was a “political will to overcome the problems of the past”.

“The current level of political and economic relations between Portugal and Angola is excellent.”

During the November trip Lourenco compared the fight against corruption in his country to “touching a wasps nest”.

Angola, a Portuguese-speaking oil-rich country, is one of Africa’s poorest countries and nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line.

The corruption trail that strained Angola-Portugal relations

The diplomacy marks an effort to move beyond the legacy of colonial rule over Angola that ended in 1975 when Portugal withdrew without handing over power and Angola sank into civil war until 2002.

Angola also entered a new era in 2017 when Dos Santos, who ruled with an iron fist from 1979, stepped down and was replaced by Lourenco.

A key source of friction between Luanda and Lisbon was removed in May when a Portuguese court decided that Angola’s former vice president Manuel Vicente can face a corruption trial in Angola instead of Portugal.

Lourenco had demanded that the trial take place in his country, “so that relations between Angola and Portugal can return to the level of the recent past”.

Chatham House analyst Alex Vines said the visit “is a further step in the normalisation of bilateral relations”.

“A year ago the relationship was fractious — mostly due to a Portuguese judicial investigation into allegations of corruption surrounding the former vice president Manuel Vicente,” he added.

“When Portugal handed over the investigative process to come under Angolan law, a remarkable thawing resulted in President Joao Lourenco visiting Portugal officially in late 2018 and now this further step in rapprochement.”

Lourenco has pledged to fight corruption and rebuild the economy of the second-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, which has still not recovered from the 2014 plunge in oil prices.

Pakistan’s intelligence had used Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists to attack India while he was in office, former president Pervez Musharraf has admitted, as the militant group occupies center stage in the Kashmir cross-border tensions. Read Full Article at RT.com

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is prepared to throw the power of its naval force – and urges the world to join in – to block the Iranian oil shipments circumventing unilaterally imposed US sanctions against Tehran. Read Full Article at RT.com

An Alabama man is suing an abortion clinic, claiming a fetus he fathered was aborted against his will, and representing the fetus in court in a bizarre legal first that he hopes will make it harder for women to have abortions. Read Full Article at RT.com

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned the ban of Tanzania’s leading newspaper, The Citizen, saying it is part of a series of attacks on freedom of expression by the government of president John Pombe Magufuli.

The Citizen was last week banned for seven days from circulation offline and online, having been accused of spreading false information about the devaluation of the Tanzanian shilling.

HRW highlighted previous suspensions on newspapers including the 2017 ban on four newspapers, and the 2016 Media Services Act which gives the government the power to restrict and limit the independence of the media.

‘‘This is all part of a wider pattern of repression targeting freedom of expression over the past few years including creating an excessively high fee to blog, criminalizing posting certain content online, fining TV stations, and prohibiting the publication of independent statistics without government permission.’‘

HRW warned that the actions of the government could prevent ‘people from having legitimate discussions about serious issues facing the country’.

Last year, several civil society organisations including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) , wrote a letter to Magufuli asking his government to end attacks on journalists and acknowledge the critical role that the civil society and independent media play in promoting peaceful coexistence.

Zimbabwe’s government on Wednesday responded to the renewal of sanctions by the United States, saying the decision was regrettable and that it would continue engaging Washington and the European Union to remove the measures that have ‘stifled’ its economy.

Sanctions were imposed under the rule of Robert Mugabe, who brought the country to near ruin during his 37-year tenure. The West accused him of rigging elections, rights abuses and oppressing opponents before he was ousted after a coup in 2017.

Why the US renewed sanctions?

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday TheTextYouWantToHyperlinkextended by one year sanctions against Zimbabwe, saying that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government’s policies still posed an “unusual and extraordinary” threat to U.S. foreign policy.

The renewal comes despite calls by African leaders like South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, for the sanctions to be lifted to give the country a chance to recover from its economic crisis.

According to U.S. officials, there are 141 entities and individuals in Zimbabwe, including Mnangagwa and Mugabe, under U.S. sanctions.

Zimbabwe’s govt responds

Foreign ministry secretary James Manzou told a committee of parliament that the sanctions were unwarranted.

“While these (sanctions) regrettably remain in place, the ministry believes the new dispensation has laid a firm foundation for future relations with the United States,” Manzou said.

The government says the sanctions law bars U.S. officials from voting for Zimbabwe to access funds from foreign lenders like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, hobbling its economy, which is gripped by a severe shortage of dollars.

With high inflation and a shortage of cash in circulation eroding ordinary citizens’ spending power, the fragile state of the economy is at the heart of the country’s political troubles.

The search for allies

Manzou, however, said the government was not giving up on mending ties with the West and had last month started informal dialogue with the EU in Harare, a precursor to formal talks that could see the country receive budgetary support in future.

The EU has retained sanctions on Mugabe, his wife and arms supplier Zimbabwe Defence Industries as well as an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, which Manzou blamed on “hawks within the EU bloc,” whom he did not name.

Manzou said Zimbabwe was on course with plans to rejoin the Commonwealth, which was set to send a fact-finding team to Harare in the first half of this year as part of steps to eventually readmit Zimbabwe, which left the grouping in 2003.

But a military crackdown on post-election violence last August and fuel price protests in January offered the starkest indications that the country is reverting to the authoritarian rule that characterised Mugabe’s rule.

In a space of three days Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed met majority of his compatriots in the Horn of Africa region for bilateral discussions and others centered on regional unity.

The Horn is a peninsula of northeastern Africa (the easternmost part of Africa) comprising Somalia and Djibouti and Eritrea and Ethiopia. Abiy has in under a week met all leaders except for Djibouti president.

It started on Sunday (March 3) when Abiy and Kenyan counterpart Uhuru Kenyatta arrived – on separate flights – in the Eritrean capital, Asmara. Abiy had earlier hosted Kenyatta who was on a two day official visit to Ethiopia.

Whiles in Ethiopia, the two along with their host Isaias Afwerki met for a tripartite summit whiles bilateral talks between Eritrea and the two respective countries were also held. Abiy’s first meeting with a leader in the Horn was in Eritrea.

On Monday, Abiy and Afwerki flew together to South Sudan where they were received by President Salva Kiir. The three leaders held discussions bordering on regional security and integration.

Then on Tuesday, the Somali leader Mohammed Abdullahi Farmaajo arrived in Addis Ababa for bilateral talks. The discussions focused on four key issues including:

iv) ensuring that relations between the administration of Somaliland & Somalia is in support of regional peace.

Abiy along with Farmaajo flew to Nairobi in Kenya where a mediation effort saw Kenya and Somalia ease diplomatic tensions that arose recently over a maritime boundary dispute.

The two neighbours have confirmed that they will restore ties as they await the outcome of an international arbitration over the issue.

In less than a week Abiy has been to Eritrea, hosted the Somali leader and helped mediate to some extent a dispute involving Somalia. Enough diplomatic work aiming at regional integration and cooperation.

All this comes on the back of the historic July 2018 peace deal with Eritrea along with Ethiopia – Somali mediation of Eritrea – Djibouti impasse and in the middle of all this is one man – Abiy Ahmed.

Enough grounds for a Nobel Peace Prize in the near future? Well, an Ethiopian lawyer thinks Abiy has earned a nomination and in fact deserves the award. It’s but a matter of time – who knows?

I hope the NobelPrize committee, which reportedly received Abiy's nominations for the award early last month, is watching these developments. Abiy is a worthy candidate that accomplished so much already in this highly volatile region: Eritrea, South Sudan, & now Kenya-Somalia. https://t.co/0mHAmtmw86

US President Donald Trump is threatening to boycott mainstream media by refusing to appear on their airwaves during the 2020 debates, after Democrats said they’d bar Fox News from hosting its own debates. Read Full Article at RT.com

The Chinese electronics giant Huawei has filed a lawsuit against the United States government, challenging Washington's decision to ban federal agencies from using its products. Read Full Article at RT.com

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet has intercepted and escorted an American RC-135 spy plane over the waters of the Baltic Sea near the Russian border, the Defense Ministry has said, releasing a short video of the engagement. Read Full Article at RT.com